There are many ways to boost revenue from your Shopify store. Upselling is one of them. In the simplest terms, upselling is persuading a customer to buy more products/services besides what they intend to buy. Upselling can happen at different times.
What’s Pre-Purchase Upselling
As the name suggests, pre-purchase upselling is done before an actual sale. A pre-purchase upsell is presented before a customer completes a transaction. In Shopify, pre-purchase upselling takes place on the cart page or product page in the form of a pop-up or on-page banner.
Whether you choose Shopify upsell on product page, or Shopify upsell at checkout page, pre-purchase upselling is still a great way of convincing customers who are ready to buy certain items to consider buying more.
Setting Up Your Shopify Store for Pre-Purchase Upsells
Pre-purchase upselling is usually done via an app. You need to install a good Upsell app for Shopify to do seamless upselling. One such pre-purchase upsell app is Candy Rack. How do you set up your Shopify store for pre-purchase upsells with Candy Rack?
Here are some simple pre purchase upsell examples with Candy Rack to help you get started;
Step 1: Install Candy Rack App
Head to Candy Rack from Shopify App Store and click “add app”
Step 2: Create Offer
Proceed by creating your product upsell offer as shown below;
Step 3: Upsell Configuration
Configure your offer as you wish i.e., if the upsell will display for all products or specific ones. You can add other conditions. There’s also an option to choose placement. Since this is a pre-purchase upsell offer/example, you can add an upsell to the cart button or checkout buttons. In such a case the upsell will appear when the cart button is clicked or when the checkout button is clicked, respectively.
Some additional configurations can be made. For instance, you can give specific upsell positions to determine which upsell will be displayed first. The upsell can also be configured to ensure it doesn’t appear if it is present in the cart. Other configurations include displays based on specific cart value.
Step 4: Preview Pre-Purchase upsell
Once done, you can preview your offer to see if it matches your expectations. It is possible to have custom designs and features as well as suggest features. You can select the pop-up layout of your choice i.e., tree or grid layout, and select the size of your pop-up image.
Additional elements can be added in i.e., buttons and their actions configured. Other impressive Candy Rack features include custom colour additions or upgrades, pop-up views (limited or unlimited), custom wording, and more. You can design offers as you like and seek assistance.
Tips For Avoiding Common Mistakes in Pre-purchase Upselling
If you want the best out of pre-purchase upsell apps like Candy Rack, you must avoid the mistakes below;
1. Irrelevant Upsells
Upselling makes sense only when you are suggesting the products that your customers are interested in. The importance of having a powerful AI-powered pre-purchase upsell app like Candy Rack can’t, therefore, be over-emphasized. Irrelevant suggestions that aren’t based on a customer’s past purchases, interests, etc., won’t be convincing.
2. Excessive Upselling
Upselling also needs to be subtle. If a customer closes a popup, they shouldn’t see many other popups interrupting their buying or shopping experience. Excessive upselling can annoy existing and potential customers lowering overall sales over time instead of boosting sales.
3. Not Testing Upsell Offers
Every upselling process must undergo an A/B testing process. When using AI-powered algorithms, it’s important to test different algorithms and see if they are suggesting products that are most likely to be bought. The performance should be tested for different factors, from product suggestions to price, customer segments, and more.
4. Lack of Clarity in Offers
Suggested offers should be crystal clear, with pricing, discounts, and other important information clearly included. Potential and existing customers can’t take up offers with confidence if they don’t know exactly how much they will save or other benefits they stand to enjoy.
5. Ignoring Customer Feedback
While AI-powered upsell apps use advanced tech like machine learning and artificial intelligence that ensure suggestions improve automatically over time as the app gains access to more data, the tech isn’t foolproof. For this reason, it helps to rely on customer feedback as well.
Pre-purchase upselling apps should have a customer feedback collecting mechanism that helps customers say exactly why they opted out of an upsell. It may be reasons linked to pricing, timing, overselling, wrong suggestions, etc. This feedback should be used to improve pre-purchase upselling offers.
6. Poor Timing
As the name suggests, pre-purchase upselling apps upsell before a purchase is complete. For customers that already know the products they want, the popups can be annoying. A pop-up shouldn’t interrupt the product selection process. Ideally, it should be somewhere before the final payment stage without interfering with the payment process. A/B testing can reveal the perfect time to show customers upsell offers.
7. Overpricing Upsells
Overpricing upsells is as counterproductive as excessive upselling and showing irrelevant upsells. Customers only take up offers that are worthwhile. A significant price savings on items normally bought or needed will influence an impulse purchase. The importance of doing A/B testing for pricing can’t, therefore, be overlooked.
8. Forgetting Mobile Optimization
Lastly, since pre-purchase upsells are usually presented in the form of pop-up or on-page banners and majority of shoppers today use mobile devices, the upsell app in question must have mobile optimization options. Forgetting about mobile optimization will result in poorly displayed pop-ups and banners that can’t achieve their objective.
Conclusion
We’ve defined pre-purchase upsell offers and provided step-by-step instructions on setting up your Shopify store for pre-purchase upsells using Candy Rack. We’ve also discussed the pre-purchase upselling mistakes to avoid.
With the above information, you are guaranteed an in-cart upsell Shopify experience with Candy Rack that is bound to generate sales. Here’s a detailed Candy Rack review. You can also consider other AI-powered Candy Rack Alternatives.